to some point fixed and unknown
by Musamea
Summary: Astonishing XMen timeline, preGifted. ScottEmma. Valentine's Day, planes, and ghosts.


**Title:** to some point fixed and unknown  
**Author:** Musamea  
**Disclaimer:** Marvel owns them.   
**Warnings:** A wee bit of language. A not-so-wee bit of sex.  
**Summary:** AXM universe, pre-Gifted. Scott/Emma, and Valentine's Day.  
**A/N: **Written for the xmenflashfic Valentine's challenge. Many thanks to Sionnain for the beta. 

* * *

On their second Valentine's Day together as a couple, Scott takes Emma up for a flight in the Blackbird.

He's not sure if it counts as a date, exactly, but it's one thing he and Jean never did. The plane was all utility to her, never beauty. She'd loved the jet in her own way, as an ally in battle and a veteran of all her wars, but she'd also called the Blackbird a "metal bitch" and, near the end, Scott's other woman.

No, it was always candle-lit dinners and rose petals for the two of them. And he hadn't minded, though Jean was always more enthusiastic about the commercial aspects of the holiday. He'd been pragmatic, arguing that they ought to celebrate the day after, when supermarkets sold their leftover candy at half-price and restaurants around town weren't completely booked. She would roll her eyes at these objections and stick her tongue out at him, and he'd stubbornly persist in his supposed masculine boorishness, just because it delighted her so.

Scott has a nagging suspicion that Emma, if she even cares, hates Valentine's Day. It seems like the kind of thing she would hate -- all sentiment and cheapness, like the fake lace glued to red boxes of heart-shaped chocolates. He wonders when he became the romantic one.

Emma meets him in the hangar, wrapped up in a white flight jacket and wearing sensible shoes. He's disoriented for a second by the inches she's lost, the skin she has covered, but she reads his facial expression as easily as she reads his mind.

"What did you expect? It's _cold_ down here." There is a slight edge to her tired voice, and he wonders how much of her day she had to spend shielded from teenage hormones at fever pitch. What she doesn't say is that there is no one here to see the shedding of her public masks, and he understands that this is trust, somehow. On this day, of all days, Emma Frost will be no man's fantasy and cater to no man's expectations. Her gift to him.

He cups her face with hands that smell like jet fuel and metal and brushes a kiss across her forehead. "Come on," he says, reaching down and grabbing her hand, "we're going to miss the sunset."

She sits with her hands in her lap, head tilted back and eyes closed, as he fires up the engines and goes through the takeoff procedure. The jet purrs beneath his fingers, responding to every touch. Good old Blackbird.

They clear the treeline and he sets a course westward, then flicks on the autopilot.

"Emma?"

She opens her eyes and looks at him. "Can we just keep flying? Forget the school and the team and just… _go_?"

She's only half-joking, but he says, lightly, "Was it that bad, today?"

Emma snorts. "I'm not entirely sure if I ought to drop my shields yet, in case some student's pornographic musings catch up with us all the way up here."

"You could just give them all detention."

"I could. Especially when they muse about _you_."

He's not sure what his face looks like right now, but what he feels is a mix of amusement and intense discomfort, and when Emma tosses her head back and laughs in delight, he wonders if she didn't just make it all up to provoke such a reaction.

_I most certainly didn't, Scott Summers. Professor Summers. Professor Take-Me-Now Summers._

"If you go on," he says, "I will very quickly and very methodically crash this plane."

"As if you could," she says, and it's the challenge in her voice that makes him grab the gears and angle the jet's nose downward.

"Just watch me."

She squeals and grips at her seat's armrests with both hands, but what she projects into his mind is excitement and not fear, so he lets them drop for a few more seconds before easing the Blackbird back up. Jean, he thinks, would never have let him get away with that trick. Her TK and her pilot's training would've had them steadied in no time, and _then_ she would have yelled at him.

Emma's voice cuts into his thoughts. "I knew you wouldn't do it."

"Other than the fact that the school could never replace the jet, or you or me?"

His grin does not elicit an answering smile. "You wouldn't crash her, because you love her," she says, so soft he almost misses it.

_I missed a step_, he thinks at her. _Are we still talking about the plane?_

He almost expects her to ignore him, to shut him out and shut him down for the rest of this flight, which was a stupid idea anyway and he should just head back now and--

_I'm not _her_, Scott. _ If thoughts had colors, that one would have been the bright, nearly-white blue that lies at the heart of the hottest fires.

_I know--_

_And I'm not the opposite of her, either._

"Okay," he says, "I officially liked it better when you were mad at the kids."

"Don't avoid the subject," she snaps.

"Emma, it's Valentine's Day. Can we not fight about my dead wife?"

"If you're going to be thinking about her, then I bloody well am going to, too."

_I won't share you, not like that_. He's not sure if that's her thought or his, or some stray drift of Jean that might or might not be passing through their corner of the cosmos at this particular moment.

"You want to talk? Fine, let's talk." The sun setting in his eyes is red, and his hands at the controls are red, and the whole world is red. "Do you know how fucking hard it was for me to come up with something to give you? You are impossible to surprise, impossible to shop for… and this, this wasn't supposed to be some trip down memory lane. I wanted to do something I hadn't done with… it was supposed to be for you, just to be with you--"

She unfastens the seatbelt and slides off her chair and into his lap. "Then be with me," she hisses, before pressing her mouth to his. Her kiss is rough and insistent, and her teeth nip at his lower lip. One of her hands clutches at the nape of his neck, nails just barely scratching his skin. The other finds its way from his shoulder to his stomach, then lower. And he's so hard, so pent-up with anger and frustration and sudden lust, that this pressure of her hand on his crotch and her mouth on his mouth is nearly all it takes to make him come then and there.

A memory comes to his mind, unbidden. The one time Jean had let him convince her to have sex on the Blackbird. The plane was in the hangar then, but otherwise, it was like this, urgent and hungry and--

"Emma," he gasps. "Emma, stop."

She stills, then pulls away from him, her face a perfect mask. _If you dare tell me that you and Jean--_

_We did_, he thinks back at her. _And that's why I can't… like this. Not like this and still be all here, with you._

She bites her lip and looks away. "Then what does it matter? Damned if we do and damned if we don't, Scott."

"No," he says, setting his hands on her hips and scooting her closer. "Let's both be here." He doesn't know how to say the rest -- that he wants to go slow, not because it'd be different, but because it's how he's thought about making love to her all day, and this is something she can hold and hang onto and know is fully hers -- so he leaves this jumble of thought in the front of his mind and leans forward to kiss her. A slow, leisurely kiss on lips that gradually soften beneath his.

He strokes the small of her back with one hand, right in the spot where she likes it. She moans a little into his mouth. The plane hums beneath his feet. He can feel the heat of her where she's straddling him, but he takes his time, planting kisses in each corner of her mouth, along the line of her jaw, against the pulse beating in her neck.

Her eyes are closed when he draws back and asks, "Emma?"

_Right here with you_, she answers him telepathically. But aloud, she only says, "Just don't crash the damn plane," before tugging him forward for another kiss.


End file.
